Shorts for July 14, 2015: A persistent recession for most of us, a candidate scarier than Trump, and Flash fizzles

Recession persists for all but the top 20 percent of wage earners

How are you doing compared to 2007? The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released a graph of real compensation and wages for civilian workers, by percentile, 2007-2014. Kevin Drum writes in a July 13, 2015, article on Mother Jones that only the top 20 percent of wage earners increased their earnings, and only the top 10 percent increased by more than 3 percent. (Sigh.) ------------------------------------------------------------The only Republican Presidential candidate scarier than Donald Trump Paul Krugman unmasks Jeb Bush, as reported by AlterNet's Janet Allon in a July 13, 2015, article. ------------------------------------------------------------Ad blocking saves a Canadian university 40 percent of its bandwidth bill Researchers at Simon Foster University report (pdf) on the school's use of AdBlock Plus in an "enterprise setting." Tech Week Europe's Ben Sullivan writes in a July 10, 2015, article that AdBlock Plus reduced bandwidth on the university's internal network between 25 and 40 percent. Saving bandwidth by blocking unwanted content: What's not to like?---------------------------------------------------------

Flash is so 2005 When I heard that Firefox now blocks Adobe's Flash scripts by default, I was thankful we're a big step closer to putting the web-animation technology out of our misery. I've been blocking Flash and other scripts for so long it has become just another part of browsing. As Macworld's Glenn Fleischman writes in a July 14, 2015, article, Flash had its day, but that day was a lot of years ago. Fleischman claims that Flash has already become such an afterthought that killing it once and for all would barely cause a ripple. Out with a whimper works for me.